


If Found

by myownprivate-utah (allofthepixels)



Category: Actor RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - You've Got Mail Fusion, F/M, Identity Reveal, Pen Pals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26473753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allofthepixels/pseuds/myownprivate-utah
Summary: After losing a notebook in a Brooklyn bar two years ago, Alana Miles has lost a few more things and gained some others. Lost? Her tiny Brooklyn apartment, her first love-turned fiancé, their shared cat. Gained? A small rental house in her hometown, a second book deal, a rescue bulldog and a faceless email pen pal she may or may not be falling for.
Relationships: Keanu Reeves/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 5





	If Found

**Author's Note:**

> A Fluff-as-Fuck Penpals Story because we’re in a fuckin’ pandemic and I want to write about yearning, goddamnit. I have no outline, no plan and am just going wild with it. Embrace the chaos, or whatever.

It’s a little early to be up for a Saturday, but she cracks open her laptop anyway — careful not to jostle the sleeping bulldog deep snoring across her legs. Alana has tried to let herself sleep in more on weekends, lately. With the weekdays full of deadlines, interviews and long calls with her editor normally kicking off before her morning coffee’s kicked in, the few blissful hours of no screens and light-blocking blinds on Saturdays were usually her favorite thing. Usually.

It’s not her fault, though. Because of stupid timezones, there was a message waiting for her that she’d be itching to see and even after years (plural) of back-and-forth emails with her accidental pen pal, the little rush of seeing where the conversation would go next was enough to make her a bit more of a morning person (even when she doesn’t have to be). 

\-- --

To: Miles2Go@mail.net.

From: KCR@mail.net

Subject: RE: RE: RE: The Not-Divorce is Finalized! 

A, 

Sure, okay, I believe you.

I know you said you were fine and I understand I’m maybe half-obligated by the terms of our friendship to take that at face value and instead pivot to asking you about your day or the book proposal or whether you got around to reading that book I sent you (it’s a chapbook, honestly, and you pretty much read for a living). And I will ask those things. 

But I wanted to add, RE: your point on “closure not even being a fuckin’ real thing” that I’m not sure if I agree. Provided you’re giving yourself the grace to step away and close the chapters, relationships, painful memories in order to open something up, it’s as real as you want to make it. 

But what you’re going through (all of it), it’s draining and exhausting and you’re carrying a lot. Closing a door doesn’t mean everything’s resolved behind the door, just that you’ve resolved to let yourself be on the other side. 

I think you’re brave and good, if that helps. And I hope you’ll read that goddamn chapbook so we can talk about it. 

Yours, 

KC  


\-- --

Welp. That’ll need coffee to respond to, she thought, slowly inching her legs out from under Bruce (who let out an insulted snort before snuffling back into the duvet) and heading out to the kitchen. 

Mug in hand, she made her way out to the porch and took in the fall morning: the lake’s got the beginning reflections of red and orange showing through and the smell of burning leaves (they still do that out here) is already making its way to her door. The tiny one bedroom house she’d been renting is about five minutes from where she grew up (where her parents still live). It’s modest (if maybe cramped) but has big windows, a monthly rent that doesn’t drain her bank account beyond recovery and lets her be close to her mom for doctor’s appointments and long meetings with specialists that she trades off with her sister and brother. 

She leaves the door open a crack, since Bruce is unlikely to last long in the bed alone before stumbling out to his sunny porch bed, and takes a seat on her own “grown-up porch couch” — an oversized wicker basket chair her little brother salvaged from a friends’ student house and spray painted white to look less wretched, paired with some overly fluffy pillows her twin sister bought her. She cracked open her computer again and tried to figure out how she’d respond.

She tried, not infrequently, to picture KC. She was sure he was good looking, despite that name feeling so deeply undignified and childish for a man in his forties. (Or is he fifty by now? A funny thing about surprise pen pals is you never really exchange birthdates or A/S/L — and, in their case, they just went for the emotional jugular). She imagined a doe-eyed John Cusack-type (maybe a bit more “High Fidelity,” actually) or, of course, a Tom Hanks “You’ve Got Mail” has crossed her mind but neither really ever felt right. 

She knew a lot about him, after nearly two years of correspondence. He’s told her about the long scar going up his stomach that he got in a motorcycle accident (how he’ll forget its there even after 20 years); she knows he works in film but simply says “I help people tell lies for a living” when she asks for specifics; she knows he fell in love a few years back, after thinking he was never going to fall in love again (and that he has a gift for emphasizing the sweet of a bittersweet ending) and she know he’s a Virgo with a Cancer moon. He knew a lot about her, too: He knew birds freaked her out, that she was in the middle of final proofs of her first book and the proposal on her second; he knew she broke off an engagement (and thus a relationship spanning nearly all of her 20s) in the last year and reflexively performed being cavalier about it; he knew her mom was sick and that she left the life (the one she secretly wasn’t all that wild about) in Brooklyn to be closer to her.

It’s funny the way these little stories and pieces of ourselves can be assembled to make a person feel so whole and so close, even if they’re thousands of miles away and you’ve never seen their face and you probably wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for the right amount of happy accidents flowing in succession. 

He was her happy accident and, if she were the fate-believing type she’d believe it was some of that kismet that brought him to that Fort Green bar on that rainy afternoon. She’d been transcribing some notes in one of her many junk-ish notebooks (full of story ideas, a few email addresses and phone numbers for sources, a scribbled quote, some ticket stubs and a lone piece of gum between the back pages (whoops) — all organized by chaos) and got a call from Brandon, her then-fiancé reminding her that they’d need to leave their Greenpoint apartment for his department chair’s dinner party on the Upper West Side (a thing she’d forgotten she’d agreed to do) shortly and if she was still stopping to grab the wine. 

In her rush to settle up her tab, scamper to the liquor store next door and procure a fancy-ass bottle for the academic circle jerk, she left the notebook behind. Luckily, she’d remembered to scrawl her email in the front cover that time —she wasn’t going to let some rando find her address!

KC, as he told her later in one of their subsequent emails, found it and “began trying to decipher its many, many mysteries (the gum, for example).” 

She couldn’t be mad, she 100 percent would’ve done the same thing if fate, kismet, the universe’s funky algorithm, who knows, left someone else’s brain-dump to her doorstep. Between that confession (and the charming apology that came with it), the emails just didn’t stop — long after he’d sent the book back. 

Despite this two year friendship, she hasn’t seen his face — and only recently heard his voice. She knows he’s older than her 34 years by a not-small amount. (He doesn’t have an instagram or a Twitter and when she asked him why he responded “Oh, that. What would I do with that stuff, really?”) And 95% of the time it doesn’t bother her. But then she sees emails like that and thinks of his deep, thoughtful voice (the calm, intentional pauses when he speaks that go soft and quiet over the phone line) and something in her twitches. 

It’s been a long 18 months of being very single and maybe, just maybe it’s messing with her head to have such careful, considerate attention 4-8 (depending on how much they write and how busy they are) times a week. 

\-- --

To: KCR@mail.net

From: Miles2Go@mail.net.

Subject: Doors Open & Closed — moving on.

KC, 

That poet soul of yours is working overtime today, bud. It’s too early for my icy heart to thaw the way it needs to if I’m going to adequately respond, so take this: I know. You’re right. I’ll try. Thank you. 

And try to let it be the end of this for now. 

I’m digitally and spiritually cleansing this space and cracking open this sad pamphlet of a book you sent me. Stand by for my thoughts. 

Chilliest regards (with a gooey center), 

A

P.S. You promised me that shortlist of “films I need to watch now that I work from home and can watch movies all day.” Keep in mind, my attention span is like my love life: short, sad and ridiculous. 

\-- --

She hits send and quickly checks in on the few dangling work emails that couldn’t wait until Monday. It’ll be a few hours before her West Coaster pen pal is up and a few more before he’s near a screen. He’s an early riser, but more of a yoga, outdoors-y, going jogging (ugh) kind than a feverish AM emailer. But she’ll forgive him that one (admittedly well-adjusted) flaw for now.


End file.
